Here comes the next content patch (3.2)

[Arrrgh]

As someone who has been #1 DPS over an instance while tanking it, clearing instances with subpar DPS when you have tasted the fruit of clearing heroics with every DPS above 4k is like having your dick slammed with every pull.  It just takes so damn long for everything to die.

Oh believe me, as someone who does 5k regularly now, if I am in a group where everyone is doing 1500-1750DPS, it is hell on me because I know how fast it can be proceeding when our guild 6k rogue, me, and a guild hunter who pulls 5500 are on the run.  It bothers me most on my healer, because I have to deal with mana management when it could be going MUCH faster.

Like today, I was in Heroic Azol'Nerub and I was pulling 4800DPS and the next one down was... 2100.  It went smoothly, but there were some frustrating areas where people were not getting the mobs down fast enough and were taxing the hell out of our healer.

Back when you were the guy doing 2100  were you concerned about how much you were taxing the healer?

[Azazel]

2100 was the uber number back when he was there. 

[Merusk]

Meh it never bothers me. Everyone's a noob at some point, and there's just a lot behind the curve.   For example, I  Ran heroic VH yesterday as a tank with a guildie healer &  mage. The other two PUG'd DPS were pulling less damage & DPS than me in my BC/Nax/Badge tank gear. I noticed and mentioned in guildchat "Wow, we're totally carrying these guys through."    The healer said "Yeah, I noticed that" and that was the end of it.   At the end one of them got the achieves for VH, HVH and Defenseless and both of them picked up some items on the way through, so I actually felt good about carrying them.

  Had it been a wipe fest or they had done stupid shit like whined about me kiting the ethereal like I did, then I'd have been pissed.  However, heroics are a cake walk and finishing them 5-10 mins later than I could isn't going to ruin my evening.

[dd0029]

New 80s in quest greens / some blues aren't going to be pushing 2k dps, especially if they're a gear-dependent class like warrior... and definitely not going to push 2k on a dummy. :p

Well, this was me yesterday.  Ding'd 80 on my warrior and hit the heroic train.  Note that the "pve" gear is slighty different.  Swap the heirloom badge chest in, the lvl 70 engineering hat and that blue belt you get in Dragonblight.  First up was H ToC.  Granted that was with a geared guild group, I did not feel terrible at 2100 DPS.  That one was 4 warriors and a priest, so we did have Sunder that I did not have to apply.  Next was a HVH where I managed to abuse Bladestorm and Sweeping Strikes.  Nexus was the last.  For the second non guild groups, I was comfortably pushing 2k DPS in mostly quest blues and a couple of greens.

[Zetor]

I think your case is the exception, not the norm. While we're bragging [ :p ], I also did 2.3k two minutes after dinging lv80 in normal toc [without level 80 spells, even] on my destro lock in 3 heirlooms, 2-3 blue instance drops from vh/hol, 1 piece of tier4 + frozen shadoweave each and the rest of the stuff being quest greens, but that was with a demo lock and unholy dk boosting my damage like crazy... plus destro locks are pretty OP when they can chaincast (I don't think I needed to move once) and they don't really need uber gear to melt faces.

But that doesn't change my point - you can't expect people to do 2k+ dps as fresh 80s, especially without any outside [de]buffs. I typically play healer in PUGs, and personally don't have a problem with low DPSers unless they are far below the tank AND stand in fire at the same time. Some fights are even more fun/challenging with low dps instead of the usual 'pull, ~60 seconds pass, boss dead, collect loot' routine (though I understand why it'd grate on people with repair bills etc). Have you healed Jedoga with such low dps that she managed to sacrifice all but one of the mobs? Or 3-manned the herald because the rest of the group died fighting the mirror images? Yeah... 

[WindupAtheist]

I've found I do 2700 to the level 80 dummy and 2200 to the "boss" dummy, in honor purples with the axe from HTOC. So yeah, dedicated PVE gear isn't really needed unless you plan to raid. Personally I'm going to run whatever five-man comes out with Icecrown Citadel a few times to get whatever two-hander drops out of it, and then I'm basically done with instance PVE until... uh... Cataclysm I guess. I'll probably run stuff with friends for the hell of it, but that's it.

[dd0029]

Jedoga with such low dps that she managed to sacrifice all but one of the mobs

Wow.  Now that's some low DPS.  Though I will say the Herald gets easier with fewer people.  You will have more DPS time on him and less wasted with the mirrors.

That reminds me, I need to train.  I don't have my 80 abilities yet.  

I don't believe I am an exceptional warrior.  I am actually fairly sure I am crap.  I get lost rotation wise fairly early.  Perhaps its better to say that a competent player can push 2k DPS in quest greens and blues.  My Nexus run had a really well geared Ret pally who I significantly out DPS'd.  I'm not sure how though.  Ret DPS is four buttons, click whichever is off cooldown.

[Sheepherder]

I've found I do 2700 to the level 80 dummy and 2200 to the "boss" dummy, in honor purples with the axe from HTOC. So yeah, dedicated PVE gear isn't really needed unless you plan to raid.

Once the pull has begun, Patchwerk will still melee the main tank, who will be first on aggro, and hateful the person with the second highest threat (this must be the Hateful tank); this makes it important establish tank aggro correctly and promptly when the fight begins). At this point it is simply a test of killing Patchwerk before his berserk timer and keeping the tanks alive. You will need 12,000 raid DPS, or 1,500/person including tanks, to do this. Patchwerk also does a soft enrage (Frenzy) at 5% health, this should only last a few seconds before he goes down. Damage mitigation cooldowns (e.g., Shield Wall, Divine Protection, etc.) can be helpful to mitigate damage during the short soft enrage period. It is generally unnecessary to save dps cooldowns (e.g., Bloodlust) for the enrage period, though, as Patchwerk will normally be killed before the end of any tank cooldowns that are applied.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Patchwerk#10-man_strategy

 

EDIT: Don't forget WUA, you didn't have raid buffs either unless you had a buffbot at the dummies.

EDIT2: DD: Retribution is more than four buttons.  You were just grouped with a bad.

[Selby]

Back when you were the guy doing 2100  were you concerned about how much you were taxing the healer?

On heroics the only time I am really concerned about my or group DPS is when we aren't killing the mobs fast enough before the healer runs out of mana.  I don't look down on anyone for low numbers unless I checked out their gear and they are a hunter or mage who is doing 1200-1500 with lots of epic gear.  I don't even refuse to run groups with people who are fresh 80s either ;-)

[WindupAtheist]

My Nexus run had a really well geared Ret pally who I significantly out DPS'd.  I'm not sure how though.  Ret DPS is four buttons, click whichever is off cooldown.

Let's be serious. There's nothing in WoW PVE (particularly DPS) that a trained monkey couldn't do, and nothing in the game at all which requires as much skill as... say... Street Fighter. I'm frankly tired of hearing "Ret has four buttons, but I have five plus another one I push when a light turns on! I am a superior primate, ook ook give me a peanut!"

[Shrike]

There's nothing inherently difficult about pushing buttons and slopping through an instance/raid/whathaveyou. However, the player should have a little motivation to do well and that means learning how your class works and making an effort to get up to par. That's what pisses me off about PuGs in general: most are too fucking lazy to make the effort. They expect to be carried and I get to foot the bill.

I have an example from last night, too. Joined an Uld10 PuG. This is a semi-organized PuG that is run by a relatively well known guild on Whisperwind. I'm not sure how many alts make this thing up, but I suspect it's more than a few. Still, when our dps is obviously struggling (and I'm 6.5k dps...) something ain't right. A few quick inspections reveals why: lvl80 blues, no enchants, NO GEMS, and just some piss poor talent choices. Two of our physical dps met that description. Clothies I don't know shit about, so I ignore them regardless. Still, the RL let these guys in. Progress wasn't good (gee, can't imagine why...). Hell, I would have cut the one rogue gems on the spot if I"d had any. I mean, I would NEVER go into a raid in this condition. Have some pride, if nothing else. I suspect the healers weren't much better, since the tank was rather substantial and was folding up right and left.

Anyway, the main point is if you're going to raid, make an effort to get in shape. If I see someone in blues and a few AH epics, but they're fully gemmed, enchanted, and pulling down 2k, at least I know they're trying. That's good. If I see a rogue with il226 weapons, but no fucking enchants on them, no gems, and missing armor enchants in an Ulduar raid, then I get stabby. That's just bad.

[dd0029]

And now for something completely different, I still hate fucking jousting.  Dumb GCDs that fire even when abilities aren't used.  And why the fuck do the mounts turn like vehicles instead of normal mounts?  I feel like a god damned keyboard turner every time I forget how crappy it is and try it again.

[Lightstalker]

My Nexus run had a really well geared Ret pally who I significantly out DPS'd.  I'm not sure how though.  Ret DPS is four buttons, click whichever is off cooldown.

Let's be serious. There's nothing in WoW PVE (particularly DPS) that a trained monkey couldn't do, and nothing in the game at all which requires as much skill as... say... Street Fighter. I'm frankly tired of hearing "Ret has four buttons, but I have five plus another one I push when a light turns on! I am a superior primate, ook ook give me a peanut!"

Correct movement, target swapping, and decision making when presented with options are things that a trained monkey could find challenging, our raiders surely do.  Ret Paladin simplifies all three of those points of failure.  Sure nothing about WoW is hard nor challenging for excellent examples of humanity such as ourselves, but I'm still putting all my control challenged players into Ret so long as it is demonstrably easier for people to pull the potential out of the class.  Ret is dead simple to play, you don't have to worry about position w.r.t. the target or which mob you've selected or what button to press next.  A macro can play ret and if you screw up for a few seconds there is no repurcussion that plays out as a long ramp up time or resource starvation.  We watched a 1900 dps fury warrior turn into a 4500 dps ret paladin simply by playing a class that was better suited his temperament.  He's still bad at Fury, but passable as Ret.

Since we're having a stupid conversation, last week my gf decided it would be funny to undress my character while I was out of the room, except for my shoulders, cloak and MH (so I wouldn't notice right away).  I got to the second boss in Heroic HoL before figuring out why I was only pulling 2400 dps.

[WindupAtheist]

Is there even a PVE encounter in the game that couldn't be done by a collection of very specifically programmed bots, one set of predictable scripts running against another? Every time I ask, some raider gets pissed off without ever actually saying no.

[Merusk]

There is nothing in a video game that can't be botted. Nothing. 

[Lantyssa]

Let's be serious. There's nothing in WoW PVE (particularly DPS) that a trained monkey couldn't do, and nothing in the game at all which requires as much skill as... say... Street Fighter. I'm frankly tired of hearing "Ret has four buttons, but I have five plus another one I push when a light turns on! I am a superior primate, ook ook give me a peanut!"

As a feral druid, I disagree.

I'm used to solo combat, so when I tried a PUG (thought it was a guild group and not a guildie IN a PUG) recently things went very poorly for me.  I'm sure I could learn, if I wanted to PUG more, but you can't just faceroll as a feral.

[Selby]

As a feral druid, I disagree.

Cat rotation is very unusual I've found.  Very similar to a rogue, which I've never been overly stellar at.  I tend to have issues with energy management.  In boss fights the main thing I've been told is to keep up all DoTs and Frenzy for the +dam bonuses.

[Fordel]

There are mods for cat druids specifically, that turn it into an exercise of "mash button mod tells you" to.

Without the mods, cat dps is probably more effort then most people are willing to put up with, especially for long periods of time.

[WindupAtheist]

Hey there's a boss. I'll just go stand behind it and start DPSing it the way I would a world elite or anything else I was trying to burn down in a hurry. Uh oh there's the big "WOOP WOOP" in the middle of my screen, time to jump around, run behind a pillar, or whatever the gimmick for this fight is. There's the add, DPS that before going back to the boss. Hey there's some fire, let me just get out of that.

But I guess it's easy to feel skilled for completing simple tasks when a large chunk of the playerbase is comprised of people who don't pay attention and actual school-age children. The DK who does 800 DPS in a heroic (OMFG NERDRAGE) is probably nine years old. PVP is at least somewhat less predictable, but it's still pretty herf-derf compared to... I dunno... trying to beat an Asian kid at Tekken or something.

[Sheepherder]

You could bot/macro to victory Tekken pretty easily as well with a programmable controller or an API designed to support this.

[Fordel]

Nine year old's do way more DPS in my experience. They'll giggle if you say shit, and they'll type  r e a l   s l o w  , but they are usually relativly competent.


There's also a huge variance in difficulty of "don't stand in the fire" once you get into the hard mode encounters. Where the ability to simply be aware of everything and keeping your DPS rotation optimal is beyond most people. The amount of crap they fling at you that your supposed to micro manage can be astounding.


Could you write 25 bots that could do any encounter in game? Given enough time, probably, yes. They would probably out preform all but the very best raid guilds in the end. With pixel perfect movement, coordination and timing.

You could probably write a bot that would waffle stomp most anyone in PvP though under those conditions.


In either case, it's like claiming someones ability to multiply huge numbers in their head is moot because a calculator could do it better.

[Paelos]

My group finally cleared 10 man ToC this week. It took us 4 weeks to clear faction champs, and 4 tries to clear the final two bosses. I'm not sure what that says about us or the instance, but either way it's not good.

[Merusk]

Yeah, it's stupid that FC is the cockblock of the instance.  The 10-man I was in this week one shot the first two, wiped 4 times to the FC and one shot the last two fights.  It's incredibly stupid.

[schild]

There is nothing in a video game that can't be botted. Nothing.  

Just hopping in to say bullshit. There are some games where there's simply no such thing as an effective bot. I'll agree that everything can be botted poorly, but WoW could be botted fairly perfectly with minimal effort. Nearly every MMOG could.

[Ingmar]

[Fabricated]

My group finally cleared 10 man ToC this week. It took us 4 weeks to clear faction champs, and 4 tries to clear the final two bosses. I'm not sure what that says about us or the instance, but either way it's not good.

FC is a fucking pile of shit disguised as a fight. The only reason we got past it this week is because the gods were kind to us and gave us a group without the warrior. Our raid makeup was so messed up (4 druids, no rogue) I don't know if we could've handled anything but the setup we got and we still ended the fight with me, the OT and one healer up.

Anub'arak is hilariously, pathetically easy on normal in 10-man. He's a lot tougher in 25 but not nearly as hard as say Mimiron.

[Gobbeldygook]

Yeah, it's stupid that FC is the cockblock of the instance.  The 10-man I was in this week one shot the first two, wiped 4 times to the FC and one shot the last two fights.  It's incredibly stupid.

When my guild's second 25-man TOC hit the instance, I went along.  They let me go prot!  My job was to babysit the warlock who's babysitting the druid, peeling anything that dared come near her, and also interrupting heals and dispelling hots and intervening people and disarming melee and maintaining a sunder stack on the primary burn target and fear stuff whenever it wasn't too much trouble and taunt the pets off of people.

FC is by far my favorite fight in Wrath.

[K9]

You guys must be doing faction champs without a disc priest. Disc priests trivialise that encounter hard.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Seriously, faction champions are not hard. Protip: dont ALWAYS kill the healers first.  My guild finds killing the resto druid first helps because the hots are a pain, have rogues sit on the other cast time healers while we burn down one of the heavy hitters warrior/ret pally/rogue.  the holy pally is zero threat from a healing standpoint. he may dispel a little but he's a joke.

[K9]

We find it easier (in 10) to just burn a DPS. The healing throughput of the NPC healers isn't astronomical, and a fair bit of it can be dispelled. Once you get one DPS down the fight is pretty much won, since the amount of confusion drops significantly.

[Merusk]

There is nothing in a video game that can't be botted. Nothing.  

Just hopping in to say bullshit. There are some games where there's simply no such thing as an effective bot. I'll agree that everything can be botted poorly, but WoW could be botted fairly perfectly with minimal effort. Nearly every MMOG could.

So what is this mythical game that is only able to be played Human vs Human because no AI exists for it?

[Paelos]

Seriously, faction champions are not hard. Protip: dont ALWAYS kill the healers first.  My guild finds killing the resto druid first helps because the hots are a pain, have rogues sit on the other cast time healers while we burn down one of the heavy hitters warrior/ret pally/rogue.  the holy pally is zero threat from a healing standpoint. he may dispel a little but he's a joke.

You assume we have a rogue, heh. Faction champs is hard if you don't carry the few classes that make it doable, or you don't have great balance. My ten man for example is:

3 Warriors, 3 druids, shaman, priest, hunter, pally.

[bhodi]

Keys to that fight you may be missing:

Spam Purge on the kill target
Mass dispel when they bloodlust
Spam Frost traps to make melee easier to kite
Kill either the rogue, shaman, or DK first, then a healer second
Assign an interruptor to other heals


Also, I found there is a cool trick to the pull: Send a tank in, with no HoTs, while everyone stands there - have him shield wall/last stand/whatever and death grip your kill target out of the pack. DON'T heal the tank. You'll have a free 10 seconds or so to burn your first kill target while they all focus on the guy who ran in. They'll reset targets after about 10 seconds or as soon as anyone heals the tank, but those 10 extra seconds in the beginning make things much easier.

[Mattemeo]

Fresh 80s doing over 2K DPS in heroics...
What the fuck, is there some kind of special cheatmode people are using?

Roll a goddamn Shadowpriest to 80 and come back here. Hitting 2K damage is a goddamn struggle, an achievement. Nutso rotation (SPriest is the Catmode equivalent of ranged DPS), horrible wind-up damage that means you're a Mind Sear monkey at best on anything that isn't a boss and even then you'll be putting out subpar AE damage till you're fully decked in i200s or better and gemmed/chanted to the hilt.

[Nebu]

The message you're being sent by Blizzard is that if you want to do dps, roll a dps class.